Don’t be like Naaman

It’s rapidly coming up on a year since a woman was introduced to me through an odd set of acquaintances.

I hadn’t hidden the path that God has placed before me from my pastor.  He knew I was studying deliverance and all the dark “fringe” things.  So somehow, a woman was brought to his attention claiming to be suffering from demonic attacks.  The best I can put the trail together, it was allegedly her boyfriend that spoke to a pastor, that then spoke to my pastor, who then referred her to me.  (The fact that this “case” passed through two pastors, both of whom failed to act is a matter for a different time.)

So I met with her.

I asked all kinds of questions, many of which warranted odd looks from her.  To summarize the matter, she had a history of some narcotic use, had been through a divorce, and her family history involved others that used narcotics and committed suicide.  But then she’d found Jesus.

Most of her account was about feelings and experiences at a location she had lived at.  It all came to a head one night after members of a church where she had “soaked” came for dinner.  Her son, shortly thereafter, was found with all of the cleaning supplies in the house because he’d been hearing voices telling him to kill himself. He’d since moved in with his father and it seemed, he had no further issues.

What killed me was that here before me, sat a woman that had gone from church to church to church seeking deliverance.  She paid large sums of money and had everyone she could pray for her and try to “pray these things off” of her.  She was constantly racking her brain, trying to remember anything and everything from her past that could have opened a doorway to the demonic.  She was trapped on a hamster wheel; running frantically, but getting nowhere.

So I spent the next week fasting a praying, and even reached out to those that are far more experienced and knowledgeable in such matters than myself. I relayed what this woman had been dealing with over the previous three years or so, and wanted to know if I had missed something- because the answer I was coming up with was far too simple when compared with all that this woman had dealt with.

But sometimes, the answer really is that simple.

God did not set us free and forgive us of our past sins so that we would remain in bondage to sin.  Being a slave to the sin nature is one side of the coin; the other is being so trapped by our past that we spend all of our time racking our brains trying to find the “missing sin” that we forgot to repent of. That’s bondage.  That’s not the “abundant life” that Jesus died on the cross to give us.

So when I met with her again, I preached Jesus’ victory on the cross.  I showed her, through Scripture, that she’s to stand in the face of these things, sure of who she is under the blood of Jesus. That she’s not to pick up her cell phone and ignore the feelings and “whispers,” but that she’s to rebuke and walk in victory.  That she’s to walk out the faith she professes to have instead of relying on others to always get rid of this oppression for her.

Even at the time that I met with her, to preach Jesus’ complete and total victory, she was “getting help” from another church in the area.  They had given her a name of the demon allegedly tormenting her though, so clearly they knew more than me; maybe this one, finally, would be able to help her.

Or they would just become another in a long list of places that she’d tried, that were able to give her temporary relief, only to have it return later.

She didn’t like what I had to say, and I never heard from her again.

I still think about her, clearly, and pray for her.  I still question whether or not there was something I had missed, something I should have seen and addressed. Maybe I wasn’t assertive enough? Did I just make things worse for her by being yet another person that couldn’t “set her free?”

Today, as I was praying about this, God reminded me of the story of Naaman in 2 Kings 5.  He sought out the man of God to be healed of leprosy, and left there, upset and feeling as though he’d wasted his time.  What kind of answer was “dip yourself seven times in the Jordan” anyway?

Then, I open my notebook to study another session and the first line on the page says it all: “No one receiving ministry form the Lord Jesus is to be passive.”

Sometimes, God is just looking for us to be obedient to what He’s told us to do.